I just remembered the following after reading about ThisIsGina's experience with talking about Russian transliteration in class.

At the beginning of the school year, we were talking about the various uses of the apostrophe in my English class, and someone attempted to say that they sometimes were used to show sounds that don't exist in English. The teacher and other students were confused, but I understood, so I explained that often in transliterations apostrophes are used to signify palatalization in Slavic languages for example (день = den'), and various glottal and ejective sounds in several languages (in Georgian for example, პ = p', ტ = t', წ = ts', ჭ = ch'). This, of course, only confused everyone further, and then the teacher said, "Why don't we just focus on English for now?"
4 persons have voted this message useful

When one of the reasons (but certainly not the only one) why you want Antanas Mockus to
win the presidential election in Colombia is because he's a native speaker of Lithuanian, and
you like the idea of a Colombian president who can speak anything besides Spanish and
English.
1 person has voted this message useful

- You raise your hand in history class to insist that there is one correct transliteration of "Цар" (Tsar), because
you are very particular about the letter Ц being transliterated as a "ts", not "cz" or any other variations. Everyone
in the class groans at your nerdiness (these people already ridicule you since you had to make a speech about
anything in English class, and you spoke about your favourite Russian band, and apparently listening to Russian
music isn't considered normal). And then, in reply to people saying, "Yeah, you'd know" sarcastically, you reply,
"Yes, actually, I would, I know the Russian alphabet", and you feel a bit annoyed at yourself for not calling it the
Cyrillic alphabet even though you only said Russian because nobody would know what Cyrillic was. And then a
day later someone says, "Do you know the German alphabet?" and you have trouble not losing faith in humanity
as you tell them that German uses the same alphabet as English. And you're sure this has to be the nerdiest
paragraph in this thread, LOL.

It's actually spelled царь. At least you weren't like me, who got up in the middle of class, and wrote the Cyrillic
and its transliteration, much to the shock of my teacher and fellow classmates.

Edited by ruskivyetr on 13 May 2010 at 1:42am4 persons have voted this message useful

When one of the reasons (but certainly not the only one) why you want Antanas Mockus to
win the presidential election in Colombia is because he's a native speaker of Lithuanian, and
you like the idea of a Colombian president who can speak anything besides Spanish and
English.

...when you were ecstatic to hear Obama speaking Spanish during the 2008 presidential campaign. Supposedly he speaks a little Indonesian too.

Edited by Levi on 13 May 2010 at 4:51am1 person has voted this message useful

When you find yourself staying up late past bed time in order to learn some extra vocab, and then start to feel guilty because the resulting late start the next morning will mean you will have less time to learn more vocab tomorrow!
3 persons have voted this message useful

- You raise your hand in history class to insist that there is one correct transliteration of "Цар" (Tsar), because
you are very particular about the letter Ц being transliterated as a "ts", not "cz" or any other variations. Everyone
in the class groans at your nerdiness (these people already ridicule you since you had to make a speech about
anything in English class, and you spoke about your favourite Russian band, and apparently listening to Russian
music isn't considered normal). And then, in reply to people saying, "Yeah, you'd know" sarcastically, you reply,
"Yes, actually, I would, I know the Russian alphabet", and you feel a bit annoyed at yourself for not calling it the
Cyrillic alphabet even though you only said Russian because nobody would know what Cyrillic was. And then a
day later someone says, "Do you know the German alphabet?" and you have trouble not losing faith in humanity
as you tell them that German uses the same alphabet as English. And you're sure this has to be the nerdiest
paragraph in this thread, LOL.

It's actually spelled царь. At least you weren't like me, who got up in the middle of class, and wrote the Cyrillic
and its transliteration, much to the shock of my teacher and fellow classmates.

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